Bah humbug!

I think this is one of the worst Christmas seasons I can remember. Katie was sick last week, got better for 3 days and now has been sick for a solid week. This year we were a week later in shopping for our Christmas gifts and you won't believe what a difference a week makes! Brittanie asked for a Nintendo DS Lite in black. She didn't like the other colors...white, blue, and pink. It HAD to be black or she would prefer to wait till after Christmas till some black ones came in stock. Well we hunted the internet over and nobody had any. Target on Garners Ferry showed online that they had some.....they sold out two hours before Tom got there. The stuff we wanted for Katie was listed not available to be purchased online. I really hate that. With free shipping at most online retailers, there is no reason to ever leave home and battle crowds and traffic. CircuitCity, which is where we bought 85% of our gifts this year, let me order everything to be shipped except Gameboy Advance for one of my niece's daughters. It was so stupid because I actually ordered two Gameboy Advance consoles....one pink and one blue. They will ship the pink one....not the blue. The meant a trip to Circuit City. I guess that was ok since we needed to pick up a couple of gift cards from there anyway but the only Circuit City that had one in stock was Harbison. What a disaster!!! Tom went to Toys R Us to find gifts for Katie then ended up having to go the opposite direction to Lake Murray Blvd then sneak back to Harbison to go to Circuit City. He had previously been on the other side of town....all the way up to Clemson Road to the Village at Sandhills, which is HUGE, and was able to maneuver much easier over there. It was still very crowded but nothing like the disaster Harbison is. After being gone around 6 hours, he was able to get everything except the Nintendo DS for Brittanie and 3 gifts for Katie, which I was able to get at different places on the internet. In the case of the Disney Cars 5 piece camping kit (has a tent, sleeping bag, backpack, water bottle, and compass), I ended up having to get it CBSSportsStore.com. That was a first for me! For those who are interested, here is the camping kit...click here. It is really neat looking and Katie is addicted to the movie "Cars" so I thought we could set this stuff up in her play room. We also got her a Cars toy organizer to help with the disaster that is her play room. Katie loves playing with Hot Wheels cars. So Brittanie went on Disneyshopping.com and bought her the whole cast of Cars in the size of Hot Wheels cars. They came two per pack. Wal-Mart and Toys R Us had them for $8 a pack. Disney had it on sale for $5 a pack with no shipping. Can't beat that!

As long as you don't wait till the last minute, online shopping in the way to go at Christmas. Unfortunately this year we had to wait till the last minute and that was a mess. I couldn't even go help Tom because I had to stay home with Katie. She has now officially gone 24 hours without a fever. But she is still coughing and sneezing like crazy. She is EXTREMELY whiny....especially at bedtime. We had plans to have Frank and Lynn over yesterday but I canceled because I didn't want them to catch Katie's bug and we wouldn't have had much fun running for tissues every 5 minutes during our Pictionary game. So we just rescheduled for January. I hated to do that because we really look forward to spending time with them. But the last thing I want to do is get someone sick before Christmas!

So anyway, it has been a stressful Christmas season for us and I can't wait till it is over!! 8 days and counting!